Detection, quantification, isolation, and purification of target biomaterials, such as viruses and biomacromolecules (including constituents or products of living cells, for example, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids) have long been objectives of investigators. Detection and quantification are important diagnostically, for example, as indicators of various physiological conditions such as diseases. Isolation and purification of biomacromolecules are important for therapeutic uses and in biomedical research.
Polymeric materials have been widely used for the separation and purification of various target biomaterials. Such separation and purification methods can be based on any of a number of binding factors or mechanisms including the presence of an ionic group, the size of the target biomaterial, a hydrophobic interaction, an affinity interaction, the formation of a covalent bond, and so forth.
For example, guanidino-functional polymers have been used to bind relatively neutral or negatively charged biomaterials such as viruses. Such polymers can be prepared from guanidino-functional monomers, but facile, industrially useful general methods for the preparation of such monomers (particularly monomers comprising aromatic substituents and N-substituted monomers) are currently lacking.